Dec 9, 2007
“You can say pretty much anything in any human language. Human languages differ not so much in what you can say but in what you must say. In English, you are forced to differentiate singular from plural. In Japanese, you don’t have to distinguish singular from plural, but you do have to pick a specific level of politeness.
Obviously, if your language forces you to say something, you can’t be concise in that particular dimension using your language.
— Larry Wall’s counterpoint to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
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